Write what scares you, they say—it’s advice that ecologist Tyus D. Williams followed with his first book, Big Cats: What Do Lions, Tigers, and Panthers Get Up To All Day? (Macmillan/Neon Squid, April 5). The subjects of his book “could kill me if they wanted to, with ease, without breaking a sweat,” he says via a Zoom call from Berkeley, California. “There are still animals out there that can remind us of the fact that we’re not at the top of the food chain.”

Illustrated by Chaaya Prabhat, the book follows a day in the life of a variety of feline species. Hour by hour, Williams presents vignettes: a black panther slumbering, a snow leopard confronting a rival, and a tiger on the hunt. While the book isn’t gratuitous in its depictions of big cats taking down prey, the power of these awe-inspiring beasts comes through clearly.

As a neurodivergent Black man in science, Williams, a 26-year-old doctoral student in ecology at the University of California, Berkeley, finds big cats a compelling—and relatable—subject. “To be a Black carnivore ecologist is to often see myself in the carnivores I study,” he says. “I see a lot of their experiences as similar to the Black experience.” He explains that Western media has often depicted carnivores, such as big cats and wolves, as the enemy. “We think of the White European settler trying to live on the Western frontier, off the grid, and he has to deal with a pack of gray wolves taking his livelihood by eating all his cattle.”

However, says Williams, those images reflect a flawed understanding of ecology. “Yes, these animals are carnivores,” he says. “But in many cases, they really want nothing to do with you.” He adds that most cases of human-wildlife conflict stem from humans encroaching into these animals’ territories or from climate change forcing animals into areas populated by humans.

What also draws him to big cats is their environmental significance. “As keystone species, they have a tremendous influence on the ecosystem and its functionality and its health,” he says. Because big cats impact the behavior of so many other species, they are crucial to the environment, even if not everyone realizes that—something else he believes has parallels with the Black experience, “nobody really understanding how fundamentally important you are to the system that you reside in. And in many cases being the backbone for a lot of its success.”

He adds, “I always found that fascinating—to be so daunting, to be so cryptic, so misunderstood, in many ways terrifying, but to be so majestic and beautiful.”

Williams’ book is an inspired blend of facts and research; though he himself invented the stories of the big cats, they’re all rooted in actual animal behavior. One account involves a pride of lionesses deciding to back down when a clan of hyenas show up to steal their kill; another tale centers on cheetah cubs playing.

 “It’s important to try to captivate the attention of the audience,” he says. However, he’s cautious not to anthropomorphize his subjects. “I’m not speaking on behalf of the animals as if this is what they’re thinking,” he says. “I’m speaking on behalf of the animals as a biologist. This is what the cat is doing, and this is the cause and effect for what’s unfolding.” With the story of the cheetah cubs, for instance, Williams discusses how play helps young cats hone the hunting skills they’ll rely on as adults.

He believes that stories can also help children notice patterns and even develop a sense of logic. “I think it will naturally train children to be a little more observant.”

While Big Cats may be Williams’ first book, he has been making complex topics accessible to a lay audience for years. As a sophomore at the University of Georgia, he started a Twitter account (@sciencewithtyus) in part because he needed an outlet for his passions—the only biologist in his family, he didn’t encounter many others with his interests. He wanted “to take all this energy that I have, that I’ve been keeping inside ever since I was a kid, and share it with everybody else.”

In addition to providing Williams an affirming community of fellow scientists, Twitter is also a space where he can impart knowledge. He offers sharp insights into the fascinating, at times bizarre behavior of big cats, lizards, flatworms, and other creatures—in a Twitter thread from May 2021, he briefly analyzes a video of a tiger subduing a wild boar while a crocodile attempts to intercede; using GIFs of other big cats, as well as one of two housecats playing, he highlights the tiger’s grappling skills and its wrestling prowess.

Williams is also vocal, both on Twitter and as a podcast guest, about his experience being a marginalized individual in the sciences; in late March 2022, he tweeted a photo of himself with Christopher J. Schell, his first Black science mentor. Williams believes that historically, institutional racism has played a big role in keeping the sciences an overwhelmingly White space—for instance, medical experiments that have targeted African Americans have left many with a sense of mistrust of the scientific community. He adds that many Black people, who during the Great Migration left rural, agricultural areas of the South for cities, often had to “forfeit their connection to natural landscapes.” Many White people, on the other hand, “had the monetary fluidity and flexibility to move between both spaces.”

And, he says, not all spaces are safe for everyone. As a child in Georgia, he loved hiking alone, but his parents often cautioned him against doing so. Williams emphasizes that many marginalized people must ask themselves, Am I safe? Am I going to actually be considered here? Are people actually going to pay attention to my concerns and my fears?

For Williams, diversity, equity, and inclusion mean ensuring that all identities are represented at the table. At Berkeley, he tells his students that “conservation is intersectionality.” When it comes to situations involving conservation, he notes that often people listen most to the hunters who pay for permits. “But what about the people who might be animists? What about the people whose religions might be based on the beauty of the wildlife?” He adds, “We have to include everybody in the conversation.”

He’s excited to see more queer ecologists, too, who are studying ways in which queerness has been a part of nature. “We know that there’s a fluidity to gender, there’s a fluidity to sex, and we see these things represented in the natural world.…Just look at all the examples of populations of animals that literally are all females.”

Williams also wants people to recognize that many people in the sciences are neurodivergent. He has ADHD and dyscalculia and struggles with calculating arithmetic off the top of his head—something that flies in the face of the stereotypical image of a scientist. For many people, a scientist is “this perfect savant genius…[who] can do anything anybody asks you to…like [calculating] quadratic equations or rocket trajectories.” Williams adds, “I think it’s important for people to see a full representation of what the mind of a scientist is, because we’re not all the same.…What makes neurodiversity so beautiful is that everybody thinks differently. Let’s respect that.”

Mahnaz Dar is a young readers’ editor.